Arsenic, lead and cadmium in our foods

Over the past 15 years, I have noticed a rising incidence of various heavy metals toxicity. I often get asked where this could possibly come from. The report by Mike Adams, Natural News, sheds light on this:

The release of this information freaked out the U.S. rice industry, resulting in enormous pressure being put on the FDA to try to assuage fears that rice products were contaminated with arsenic (which they are).

So the FDA, always working in the interests of food corporations rather than the public, issued a statement saying that yes, there was arsenic in rice, but no, it didn’t pose any “short-term” health risks.

Well, we already knew that. Otherwise people would be dropping dead from eating rice. But what the FDA totally glossed over was the long-term health risks from chronic exposure to arsenic.

That’s where our real concerns are found, and that’s the issue that the FDA completely ignored. The FDA’s exact language on this is, “agency scientists determined that the amount of detectable arsenic is too low in the rice and rice product samples to cause any immediate or short-term adverse health effects.”

Lead and cadmium are far more toxic than arsenic

The toxic elements lead and cadmium are probably 2-3 orders of magnitude more toxic than arsenic, generally speaking. While each metal targets different body organs and metabolic pathways, the overall toxicity of lead and cadmium is many times that of arsenic.

This is ten times the level of arsenic typically found in rice products. And given that cadmium is, roughly speaking, 100 to 1,000 times more toxic to the human body, we are talking about a problem that is 1,000 – 10,000 times worse than the problem of arsenic in rice.

So why isn’t anybody talking about cadmium in rice? Probably because the issue becomes quickly politicized when the conversation turns to rice grown in China. In China, 89 percent of the rivers used to irrigate rice are heavily contaminated with cadmium. “A 2011 master’s thesis by Liu Chun, a graduate student at Hebei Agricultural Institute, noted that his tests detected excessive amounts of seven different heavy metals including cadmium in the Xiang [river],” wrote MarketWatch.com “Some 89 percent of the sampled water registered dangerous levels of cadmium.”

China’s version of the FDA found that over 44% of all rice being served at local restaurants was heavily contaminated with cadmium. Much of the rice (and rice products) sold in the USA are imported from China, and as a result they are routinely and widely contaminated with cadmium. The situation is so bad that I have personally stopped eating organic brown rice until I can identify a really clean source, at which point I will of course share that source with Natural News readers.

Arsenic has been found at 1,000 times higher levels in edible seaweed

If you’re really concerned about arsenic in foods — and you probably should be — you’ll be shocked to know that we’re finding it at over 1,000 times the level in some edible seaweed products.

Yep, the lab tests conducted by Natural News are revealing arsenic at over 200 ppm in some seaweed products. That’s 1,000 times the level generally being reported in rice.

Now, you can argue that Americans tend to eat a lot more rice than they do seaweed, and that’s absolutely true. It is, after all, the total daily intake of arsenic per kg of body weight that’s the real issue here. But for those who do eat seaweed — or for lactating moms who eat seaweed and breastfeed their children — 200 ppm arsenic is potentially a very alarming level.

Arsenic is more toxic when you don’t sweat

Most people don’t know that arsenic tends to collect in your skin. And the primary detoxification pathway for arsenic (once it accumulates in your skin) is sweating.

We live in a society today where a great many people are terrified of breaking a sweat. They live in air conditioned houses and work in air conditioned offices. They hate gyms and hate walking outdoors. They never sweat, and as a result they never remove arsenic from their skin. So it builds up, year after year, to the point of causing severe skin reactions. Search for “arsenic and skin lesions” and you’ll see what I mean.

Arsenic also damages your lungs, bladder, heart and kidneys while increasing your risk of many types of cancer along the way. Arsenic is bad news.This is why many people who don’t sweat on a routine basis benefit greatly from infra-red sauna treatments. The saunas force them to sweat, and in doing so they eliminate large quantities of toxins (which is why it’s important to shower after sweating in a sauna).

You want to know why there’s arsenic in chicken? Because chicken producers feed arsenic to chicken on purpose. It’s all part of the corporate run factory chicken production system to maximize profits while compromising the health of the consumer.

Chipotle, by the way, just released an amazing, powerful new video called “The Scarecrow” that brilliantly depicts the issue of factory-farmed chicken.”